(The Guardian) — Rex Tillerson was a part-time truth-teller. In one national security meeting, he had the piercing insight and honesty to call Donald Trump “a moron” – possibly an Anglo-Saxon kind of moron. Yet, like his boss, he lacked the self-awareness to know that the same critique applied to himself, as the moron’s secretary-of-state.
There were clues along the way, many of them spotted by the man he so openly disdained. It was the moron-in-chief who challenged the moron-of-state to an open contest of intellectual power. “I think it’s fake news,” Trump told Forbes magazine, dismissing the moronic comments. “But if he did [say] that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
Trump fires Tillerson: president swings axe after series of policy clashes
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Genius. At some point, you just have to surrender to this kind of brainpower.
But Tillerson did not have the smarts to take his analytical powers all the way to their conclusion, by building a formidable citadel of diplomacy at the state department. Instead of counter-balancing the moronic foreign policy coming out of the White House, he dismantled his own staff and budget at his headquarters in Foggy Bottom.
